 "Rajesh Khanna")
DARK STAR: THE LONELINESS OF BEING RAJESH KHANNA
Author: Gautam Chintamani
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 242
Price: Rs 499
If there's something that the Hindi film industry doesn't let you forget, it is the hysteria commanded by Rajesh Khanna, Hindi cinema's iconic superstar of the early 1970s. With his trademark mannerisms - the flick of his neck and closing of his eyes for a split second - he had our film-loving nation literally worshipping him. There were girls who would wear the dirt that the wheels of his speeding car left behind as sindoor; others who would write love letters to him in blood; still others were happy to "marry" his photograph…
Why then, would Khanna, the man who ruled the Hindi film industry as its undisputed king between 1969 and 1972, become "a shadow of his own stardom" for a large part of his career? What went wrong? Why is it that the name Rajesh Khanna in the film industry is synonymous with both success and failure? Why does it seem perfectly believable that those in the film world who are scared of losing success could just be referring to the acute sense of loss that Khanna suffered when success gradually but firmly deluded him forever? At a time when some of his contemporaries reinvented themselves - Amitabh Bachchan being the classic example with his innings as the host of Kaun Banega Crorepati and films like Cheeni Kum and Paa, among others - what made Khanna such a caricature even though he was making genuine attempts to reinvent himself? Why do we remember him as a sorry figure, a frail, lifeless man in a tuxedo talking to electric fans (in R Balki's advertisement for Havell Fans) and not as Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand, a man who had the rare ability to celebrate death on screen?
In Gautam Chintamani's aptly titled book, Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna, you will not only find yourself asking these questions all over again, but you will also find answers to what the man felt even as he dealt with his stardom and downfall. Though much of the content in the book is gleaned from what is already in the public domain, Chintamani's craft lies in revealing the reality behind all the mythmaking. The author's interviews with Salim Khan (incidentally, Khanna got him and Javed Akhtar on board for 1971's Haathi Mere Saathi, which became the writer duo's first officially credited work) and Rinki Bhattacharya (wife of the late director Basu Bhattacharya who directed Khanna in Avishkar), in particular, serve as testimony to the actor's "constant need of positive reinforcement," even as he tasted success. His genuine acting talent notwithstanding, arrogance, insecurity and loneliness became Khanna's constant companions throughout his cinematic journey.
Rinki Bhattacharya narrates an episode that offers the reader a glimpse of how Khanna was hell-bent on destroying himself. The actor was drunk and kept telling her that he was not a bad person but insisted that he could see from her eyes that she didn't believe him. Instead of guarding his success, Khanna, according to the author, had an uncanny knack of not just destroying it but also hastening the process. "It was difficult working with him because one never knew what he'd do or how he would behave the next instant," says Khan in the book.
Chintamani's book manages to capture the personality of Jatin Khanna, that is constantly in conflict with the Khanna. Publicised as the first-ever biography of the original superstar, Chintamani's Dark Star is a compulsive page-turner simply because it stays faithful to the book's basic premise - deconstructing the enigma behind the legendary superstar who was born into a well-off family, was adopted by rich relatives, who was a self-confessed "spoilt child", who "went for auditions in the latest sports car when most strugglers would walk".
Eventually, Khanna, who would be handpicked at the Filmfare-United Producers Combine Talent Hunt contest as the winner by the likes of Shakti Samanta, B R Chopra, Bimal Roy, among others, would shine in Samanta's Aradhana (1969), a journey that not only gave him success but also a long-lasting, even if tumultuous, friendship with Samanta.
Perhaps the only, very minor quibble with Dark Star is Chintamani's engagement with Khanna's films; complete with the synopsis of many of Khanna's important films, this portion was sometimes repetitive and a little tedious to get through even though the author has nicely injected some of his own, relevant thoughts on Khanna's craft, how he approached roles and prepared for them. As a reader (especially those who are familiar with his films), however, you want to quickly get to the part where, despite being in the spotlight, darkness shrouds the larger-than-life persona of the superstar even as he finds other contemporaries (whom he had written off, even insulted) zooming ahead in the race to the top.
Also, in the prologue, Chintamani cites a remarkable story of a little girl (who would later become an actor herself), trying to get the attention of her mother on spotting Khanna in the other car at a traffic signal. But the reader is left guessing just who the actor concerned is.
Chintamani's book, however, never has a dull moment - it portrays effectively how the "king in exile" was fighting to stay relevant after touching the zenith of success and hitting the ground hard with successive failures, remembering his days of glory (he tried, unsuccessfully, to make a mark in politics too), feeling despondent after the death of some of his closest friends, reeling under financial strain and getting consumed by a "sense of hopelessness".
The book quotes screenwriter Rumi Jaffery observing Khanna (the man who drove sports cars during his "struggling" phase) trading his imported car for a basic Maruti 800 while also replenishing his signature 555 cigarette packs with much cheaper Gold Flake sticks. For those familiar with his body of work, this is a leaf out of one of his own films, Swarg, where Khanna, playing the role of a business tycoon, goes bankrupt and is rebuked by his sister-in-law to take to inexpensive beedis instead of smoking expensive cigars. Additionally, the author also looks at the cinematic changing of guard in the 1980s with the coming of the young Khans, a time when many actors of the previous generation were rejected by audiences.
If Khanna's life story is a lesson in how to succeed, it is also cited as a dark tale of how claustrophobically failure can seize you and leave you impotent. Even though the author never met him, Dark Star deftly captures the journey of the superstar who never recovered from his extraordinary success and downfall.
